Christian Engineering Education Conference
CEEC-2004

Salt Lake City, Utah
June 23-25, 2004

An Engineering Student Perspective on Ethics

William Jordan and Bill Elmore
College of Engineering and Science
Louisiana Tech University

As engineering educators we have a responsibility to promote the competent
and ethical practice of engineering by our students as they enter the work place.
To effectively do this, we need to understand the students’ perspective
on ethical issues. In this paper we report on our students’ attitudes
concerning several cheating related issues. We surveyed engineering students
attending Louisiana Tech University, which is a medium sized public university
in the rural south. This paper follows up on a paper the first author wrote
in 1991 . That paper utilized student surveys taken during 1986-1990. We have
retaken the survey during winter 2004. In this paper we will examine the change
in student opinions over the past 15 years, and what this means to the way we
teach and grade our courses.
Comparing the two survey results, our students claim they are less likely to
cheat than their counterparts 15 years ago. However, the results are discouraging
when these results are correlated with other questions. About one third of the
students who claimed to have never cheated admitted they have sometimes done
things they did not think was cheating, but that they knew violated the professor’s
official standards.
It appears that our students think they are honest because they are redefining
their ethical standards to accept what they are actually doing. This is a very
post-modern approach to ethics. This is a challenge for Christian engineering
professors to persuade the students to stop redefining ethical behavior solely
on the basis of their own opinions.
It is not enough to just teach the students that engineers need to obey the
ethical code of our State Board of Registration. While this code has the force
of law behind it, many students do not believe they will be caught and have
no fear of the code. Students need an internal reason to do what is right.
To help motivate our students, the first author has taught in our senior seminar
class how our ethics come from our worldview. We have mentioned four classical
ethical theories: utilitarian ethics, duty ethics, rights ethics, and virtue
ethics. We have discussed real world engineering ethics case studies and outlined
how people would respond based on their personal ethical perspectives. We endorse
a virtue ethics approach for it is consistent with our Christian belief system.
It is something that can be openly taught in a public university classroom.
Virtue ethics is consistent with most parts of the engineering codes of conduct.